id’s Willits on why “DLC’s important” for RAGE

RAGE creative director Tim Willits has said just because id Software is almost finished with developing the game, doesn’t mean there isn’t quite a bit of work left to do before it releases.

Speaking in an interview with RPS at gamescom, Willits said along with working with Sony and Microsoft on wrapping up certification issues, the team is still optimizing things on the PC end.

“Because we’re Steamworks on PC, which is really nice, we get to keep working on our executable so the guys are back doing some last-minute tweaks on the PC version,” he said. “It’s always been solid, but there’s some things they want to do like better automatic machine configuration, get more cores to transcode the textures and stuff like that. So the guys are finishing some cert issues and doing some last-minute optimisations on PC, but when you authenticate on Steam for the first time, that’s when you’ll actually get the executable, so we can work on that until we have to ship it.”

He also said the level designers and artists are starting to work on DLC, but the team also wants to hold out on it a bit so they can “find out what people like,” once the core game is released.

“The programmers are all very, very, very busy, but the level designers and the artists are starting to work on some DLC,” he said. “But we want to hold off a bit and find out what people like, because you shouldn’t just assume people like [something] then find they want something else. So we wanna find out what they actually like for the DLC.

“When people buy the game, they spend a lot of money on it. To them it’s an investment. If they feel like the company that made it doesn’t want to invest in it, then they don’t want to invest in it. That’s why I think DLC’s important. We’re the patch kings, you know, so if there are issues that come up we’ve got to patch them. I think those things are important, to let people know that you still care about that franchise, and you want to support that franchise. Then you can make them say ‘okay, I’ll put my money down on this franchise’.”

RAGE will be released on PC and consoles October 4 in the US and October 7 in the UK.